LITMIR.BIZ

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Ruth is the only exception. She’s flirting with the three lads, and you could bet that at least one of them has a boner. You slide across to Nessi and can’t help thinking of Taja. Alone you’re nothing, together you’re strong. First Taja disappears, then Stink. Blood sisters never leave each other in the lurch. That’s what you’d love to whisper to Nessi, but Nessi would immediately think she’s the one leaving you in the lurch, so you just shut up.

      There are two beeps; Nessi fishes her phone out of her jacket. Let it not be Henrik, you think. Let it be anyone else, just not Henrik. You know a lot of idiots, but Henrik’s right up at the top of the list. No one should be made pregnant by somebody like him. You know what you’re talking about. You hooked up a few times with him and he dumped you when you wouldn’t sleep with him. Henrik is like an advertisement on TV that everybody thinks is funny and then they forget all about it because there are so many advertisements that are just as funny.

      Ruth points over your shoulder.

      “Look who’s coming!”

      You turn around. Stink is getting out of a hot set of wheels. She sticks her hands in her back pockets and comes strolling over to you. The relief floods over you with such force that you explode with stupid laughter.

       Now everything’s going to be okay again.

      “Hey, where have you been?” Ruth asks.

      “Where do you think I was?” Stink asks back and doesn’t even turn around as the red Jaguar drives off. “I took a trip. First Tenerife, then Malibu.”

      The crowd whistles and laughs, Nessi looks up from her phone and smiles wearily. Stink says she needs some chow, right now or even sooner. She is like quicksilver, nothing can hold her. Off she goes to the pizza stand. Ruth has the same idea as you and goes running after her. Nessi is forgotten for a moment. You want to know what Stink got up to with the guy in the Jag.

      “I can hardly walk,” she says, “it was that hot.”

      Ruth and you screech, even though you don’t want to, the screech just slips out of you. You immediately hold your hand in front of your mouth and your eyes glitter with envy. If you rubbed them now, it would probably rain stardust.

      “No way!” says Ruth.

      “Yes way.”

      “Tell us it’s not true!” you demand.

      “But it is true.”

      “So what would you like?”

      The pizza guy grins at you. He’s in his mid-forties, he’s wearing a stupid T-shirt, and his hair’s so greasy he looks as if his head has spent all week in the food fryer. Stink ignores him and studies the menu, even though she always orders the same pizza.

      “Who is he?” asks Ruth.

      “Who’s who?”

      “The guy with the Jag.”

      “Oh …”

      Stink pulls a face as if she’s got a toothache.

      “What’s up?” you want to know.

      “Hey, hot mama, what’s up?” asks Ruth.

      Even the pizza guy leans in curiously as if he knows what you’re talking about.

      “I forgot to ask him his name,” Stink says, making the sort of big innocent eyes that people can only make if they know that innocence is a load of lies that would drop its pants for a measly slice of pizza.

      You all walk down to the Lietzensee. The guys want to go to the park because they think that if the moon’s shining and you’re all sitting by the water it’ll be romantic and they might cop a feel. You let them believe that, because then they’ll shut their traps and try to behave properly.

      By the shore you make a dip in the grass, scrunch up some paper, and lay dry twigs over it. Indi rolls the second joint of the evening, and then you are sitting there, blowing smoke at the mosquitoes and talking quietly as if you didn’t want to disturb the night. Jasper is playing some kind of racket through his phone, a dog barks from the opposite bank, and now it would be good if you could shut your eyes and go off on one of your blanks, because you don’t really want what’s going to happen next.

      One of the guys spots it first.

      “What’s up with Nessi?”

      You look around. Nessi isn’t sitting with the rest of you anymore, she’s squatting down by the shore. And as you are looking, she slides silently into the water. Fully dressed, of course. The guys burst out laughing. You try to get up. Eric holds you back and asks if you’re about to go for a swim too, or what.

      “Nessi!”

      Stink runs to the shore, suddenly everybody’s at the shore and you’re alone sitting in the grass like a parcel that someone’s forgotten to send, and when you catch up with your girls at last, you see Nessi drifting in the middle of the lake with her arms spread. She’s just lying there playing dead, and the guys are calling out and calling her Loch Nessi, and you call her to come back, even from the hotel opposite someone calls out of a window, but Nessi doesn’t react.

      “She’ll come back,” says Stink and points into the grass where Nessi has left her wallet and phone. “Someone who doesn’t want her phone to get wet is always going to come back.”

      “I’m not going to collect her,” says Indi and spits into the water.

      “I’d have been surprised,” says Stink.

      The guys are sitting around the fire again. They’re only interested in whatever’s actually happening, and nothing’s happening on the Lietzensee right now. You girls keep standing by the shore and Ruth says Nessi must have had a row with Henrik, and you say Henrik’s an idiot, and Stink says what else is new, and adds, “The way Nessi’s behaving, she must be knocked up.”

      “I didn’t say that.”

      Your girls look at you in surprise.

      “I really didn’t say that,” you add quickly.

      “Oh, shit,” says Ruth.

      “Oh, shit,” says Stink.

      No one needs to point out that you’re one of the worst secret-keepers in the world.

      “I really didn’t say that,” you repeat, and it sounds so lame that you can’t think of anything else to say for a while. You just stare at the Lietzensee and hope that Nessi will stay in the water for a bit longer.

       II

      so you lost your trust,

      and you never should have

      Coldplay SEE YOU SOON

       THE TRAVELER

      The country heard nothing more about you for two years. You hadn’t disappeared, and you hadn’t gone into hiding. You’re not one of those people who have a second identity. Jekyll and Hyde are a nonsense as far as you’re concerned. You’ve returned to your life. Silently. There were eight hours omitted, eight hours when no one missed you.

      Your life took its course.

      In the morning you woke up and had breakfast. You were reliable at work. You had lunch with your colleagues and chatted. No shadow haunted your thoughts. You were you. On the weekends you did your family duties and visited your six-year-old son for a few hours. Your wife made lunch for you both and then tacitly handed you the bills. You parted in peace, no one mentioned divorce because no one wanted to take the last step. So every weekend you put the bills in your pocket, kissed the boy goodbye on the top of his head, and then drove back to your three-room apartment.

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